ABSTRACT
Fritz Perls invited a greater awareness of the use of language with clients introducing the concept of holism in his search for an improvement to the psychoanalytic approach. Splits and separations play out in our use of language and are perhaps necessary for clarification but there is a danger that this can lead to the creation of false dichotomies. Use of metaphor can create a dialogic bridge between the speaker and the spoken user through which a level of understanding can be gained that transcends the words used. Language that speaks from id function needs to be met with an embodied language. More subjective forms of language move the person back to a more experience-near form of description, but let the person also be mindful that the meaning of language is not fixed but is a function of the interaction between the speaker and the spoken to at that time.
